THE LIVING EXPRESSION OF LOVE
Revelation 21: 9-11, 2-4
Love in its living expression came into evidence in this chapter 13 of the gospel of John. God Himself is love; He is love in an absolute way. All that He does is the manifestation of love. Love is not selfish, and the great thought of God is to be known. He finds great pleasure in being known by creatures who come out of His hands. He is to be known by His whole creation and His creatures are to respond to Him. He has set His love on man. Even before the foundation of the world, Wisdom found its delights with the sons of men. This expression is worth remarking: the sons of men, that is to say that God finds a particular pleasure in men, not in angels, but in men, and men as sons.
This chapter 12 of the gospel of John begins in telling us that, “Jesus, knowing that his hour had come that he should depart out of this world to the Father”. His hour was come for that. It is an hour, one could say in all reverence, which He had waited for a long time. God had also awaited it for a long time. There was to be a Man in the presence of the Father, who answered entirely to God’s heart. Think of the glorious character of the Man who is in the presence of God. Christ, a Person of the Godhead, has come into manhood so that there should be in the very presence of God a Man great enough to satisfy His heart. In the fulness of time, redemption having been accomplished, the Spirit would come, and be given, so that men should be led into this wonderful order of manhood, having the Spirit of God’s Son in their hearts, being capable of responding to God in a suitable way. Now, the hour for this had come. The gospel of John does not exactly present us the Lord as being delivered up by men’s hands, although we read that Judas was ready to deliver Him up. In other gospels, He is presented as suffering from men and put to death by men and then rising. But in this gospel, He is presented in His dignity. The hour was come to go to the Father: all was in His own hands; He would move in His own dignity and His power. When His enemies come, He says, “I am”; they recoil and fall on the ground. When He was before Pilate, He says, “Thou hadst no authority whatever against me if it were not given thee from above”, so that in John’s gospel we are in the presence of divine movements. “The Word became flesh”. He went into death to break the power of death; He is gone to the Father and there is in the very presence of the Father a scene of eternal rest for the Father’s heart. We are eternally linked with Christ by the Spirit that we have received, and so that we should be able to find at some time what being in the Father’s presence is. The Lord has said, “I am coming again and shall receive you to myself, that where I am ye also may be”, that is to say, the fact that He has gone to the Father must open this scene to His own.
The Lord was therefore on the point of departing, He was going to leave His own for a moment in the world, and in view of all this it is said that He “loved them to the end”, so that, if His own were left here without Christ, the Lord took this definite attitude of loving them to the end. It is a thing on which we can rest ourselves.
In this same chapter, we see John in the bosom of Jesus, and then leaning on His breast, finding support and strength there. This is what we get in appreciating that Christ loves His own to the end. There is another thing which comes into view in this chapter; that the devil is very near. We find in verse 2, “the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon, Iscariote, that he should deliver him up”. The devil was very near, and he had even already obtained a place in the company. In verse 27 we read, “And, after the morsel, then entered Satan into him”. It is a very solemn fact that we must keep in mind, that in the presence of the greatest light and the greatest privileges, it is possible for the devil to come very near. Wherever what is for God’s pleasure is found among the saints, we may be sure that the enemy, the great adversary, will not be far away, hence the great importance of not giving him an occasion. The devil had put a wicked thought into the heart of Judas, and because he was covetous, Judas allowed the thought to remain and gave place to it. The result was that Satan himself entered into Judas; he took possession of him. It is a great warning for each of us not to allow evil thoughts to remain in our hearts. We cannot stop them coming, for it is one of the fruits of the flesh, but we have the power in the power of the Spirit to refuse them and not give them any place. If we give them a place, we allow Satan a way in.
The Lord is ready to introduce the example of love and I believe that we could give three reasons. Firstly, love is the great influence that unifies the saints and the service of God requires that we should be unified. If we are not unified, the true character of the service of God as proceeding by one and the same entity is not realised.
In the power of one Spirit we have all been baptised into one body and we have all been made to drink of one Spirit. The Lord takes His place as Head if the saints are first of all perfectly united, so that His movements towards God find their expression in the body. For all to be realised in a practical way, it is necessary that we should be united together in love. This is why the apostle Paul, in introducing the thought of the mystery in the epistle to the Colossians, speaks to us of the conflict he had that the saints should be together in love. The example of love that the Lord gives us in this chapter is with the object of affecting us in our relations one with another, so that we should be entirely united. This is absolutely essential for the service of God; it is also essential for the testimony. The Lord says, “By this shall all men know that ye are disciples of mine, if ye have love among yourselves”. The saints, in moving in unity, are a testimony which cannot be discounted. God Himself is One. You cannot find the least divergence between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Each has their own activities, but there is the most absolute unity in love in the Persons of the Godhead. So it is said that God is One. This is why unity is an essential feature in the testimony and this is why Satan tries to destroy it among the saints. But there is a third reason for which this example of love is given: it is that we are to be formed in love, not only characterised by unity in view of the service of God, not only so that we should be marked by unity in the testimony, but we are to be formed in love so that God should be expressed in the saints in the day to come. The Lord had all this in His mind. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given him all things into his hands, and that he came out from God and was going to God”. The Lord knew, it is said, the things that were before Him; it is not only the fact that the Father had put all things into His hands, but that He knew it.
He knew this when He laid aside His garments. The Father had entrusted to Christ to express all His mind and to realise it, having given Him all those who were the subjects of His counsel, and the way to realise all this being in love. This called for sacrifice, as the Lord said in chapter 10: “On this account the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again”. All the movements of Christ were from that point of view; the full extent of divine thoughts were given to Him, and all those who were the subjects of divine purpose were entrusted to Him. Not only that, but He came from God and was going to God. This was God Himself who was expressed in Christ. There is the perfect answer to this in men truly taking their character from Christ as Man.
Now, knowing all things, the Lord rises from supper and lays aside His garments: having taken a towel, He girds Himself, that is to say that He takes the attitude of a slave and begins to wash the feet of the disciples and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. All this was God in the Person of Jesus. Let us consider the movements of God in the Person of Jesus; He is ready to come so low and to wash the feet of the disciples. There was no favourite, no exception. He went all round, washing the feet of each one. It was the One into whose hands everything was given who did this so that we should be able to understand in a practical way in what way love acts. God is love and the Lord has come to express God and to impress the hearts of His own by love. One is more and more impressed by the fact that all that God has met of Satan’s influence has been met in coming into the same position, in the Person of Christ, and then in the Person of the Spirit, but it is God Himself who comes into the position. He accomplished redemption through Christ, He broke the power of death by Christ; He made light to shine in the hearts of the saints by the Spirit, He gives energy to the saints to respond in the power of the Spirit. I say this so that we should be enlarged in our appreciation of God, because the final condition to which we are led is that the tabernacle of God is with men and that God Himself will be with them, their God.
This example of the Lord’s in chapter 13 must be considered by us in each of our localities. There are two things, as one has said, which limit the dimensions of a local company: one is the cup, a single cup as it is said. A company must be such that all are able to drink from a single cup. Another side is that the company should have such proportions that it is possible to take care of all in the locality.
The Lord goes thus round the whole circle, not leaving one outside; His movements are deliberate; He does everything Himself. He does not use one of His own to go and fetch the water; He does everything in a skilful and tender way. He chooses a linen towel which would not be rough, and then He wipes their feet with the towel; they would have had the impression of the skilful and tender way with which He did this. Let us think of all this, dear brethren. It is a matter of One who sustains all things by the word of His power, of One who created the hosts of heaven in their number, and it is One who went down to the feet of His disciples. We thus have love not in an abstract way, but in its practical activities. Then having washed their feet, He takes His garments again, and being seated, He says to them, “Do you know what I have done to you?”, as if the Lord would lead them to consider well what He had done, desiring us also to be kept in contemplation of this scene, so that it impresses us, each one, so that we consider each one of us as worthy to be served. Any service which is done should not be thought too small. He therefore says, “I have given you an example that, as I have done to you, ye should do also”. He goes on, “The bondman is not greater than his lord”, reminding us of our own place in relation to the Lord, we are His bondmen, “or the sent greater than he who has sent him”. The idea of a bondman is that we belong absolutely to Another, and the idea of being sent is that we know why we are here. The sent one is there with a definite mission, and we are here in view of expressing God. The Name of the Father is attached to the saints, so that the Lord in teaching them to pray, says to them: “When ye pray, say, Father; thy name be hallowed”. This must be the first consideration to have before us: the Name of God attaches to ourselves and that this Name should be hallowed.
Then I have read in Revelation first in the middle of chapter 21, because the holy city is seen descending out of heaven from God in the world to come. It is said of her that she has the glory of God. The glory of God is a very simple thought. God is expressed in love; the glory is the expression of what He is, and He has found wonderful means of expressing Himself in Christ, the Word become flesh, so that the saints formed under His influence in love may become in their turn an expression of God. God is expressed perfectly in Christ, but now the assembly is the body of Christ, the means by which God known in Christ can be expressed; hence the necessity of being formed in love. It is why it is said, “Come here, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife”.
The Spirit of God makes use of the place we have in the affections of Christ, and the place that He has Himself in the affections of His own to manifest the influence of Christ more and more. A true wife has consideration for the desires of her husband. The more we consider the Lord, in the gospel of John especially, the more we see that the Lord Jesus has consideration for God, and in bearing the true character of the Lamb’s wife, we should have consideration for God here. She is seen here as the bride, the Lamb’s wife, that is the assembly seen in its most excellent character, as the supreme product, the divine masterpiece, the fulness of Christ, such that the moral glories that have shone in Jesus in chapter 13 of John are developed and shine in the holy city. This is why we are formed. The circle of the brethren is the circle in which love is developed. As soon as sin entered into the world and Adam and Eve became guilty and estranged from God, God has faced up to the situation by the coats of skins, indicating the death of Christ as the foundation for the redemption of man, but this also implies love because this could not be met except by the death of Christ. God has shone in love as soon as sin came in, it is the light in which God is known now. After this, God introduced the circle of brethren, Cain is born, and it is said that Eve bore his brother, Abel. If you read Genesis 4, you will find that the word brother is mentioned seven times. As soon as the light of God is seen in the world, God introduced a circle of brethren—two sufficing to give the idea, Cain and Abel, two brothers in whom the light could appear and be expressed, but Cain was a child of the devil; he murdered his brother. Then God introduced Seth in his place. You find this fact: as soon as the true light shines in the world, the circle of brethren is introduced, so that the light has a place and leads to results. This is what is developed in the epistle of John where we have the circle of the brethren and where the necessity for love is accentuated. All this is not only in view of the world to come, but also the eternal day. Thus it is at the beginning of Revelation 21, John saw, “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband”. This shows that all that pleases God in us is formed in the measure that we remain under the influence of Christ. So she is therefore prepared as a bride adorned for her husband: she has consideration for her husband’s pleasure; she displays the true characteristics that please Him. We must therefore study the movements of Christ in John 13 and learn to take them on, not only because they are for the pleasure of Christ, but so that we should be formed into a vessel in which they can be expressed. So we hear a voice that says “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men”. “The Word became flesh and dwelt (tabernacled) among us”. The Lord came among men in great simplicity: God had come among men in this very manner, there where there was what was contrary to Him. Man has rejected the Son of God, but in eternity there will be no evil at all and God Himself will dwell with men, their God. The assembly will be the tabernacle of God, that in which He will maintain contact with other families, then there is this wonderful end in view: “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes”. Everything we have before us is very attractive: first the Lord washing the feet of His disciples and wiping them with the linen towel with which He was girded, then God Himself wiping every tear from their eyes. It is thus that God is made known in what He is and we must take on this character according to Christ, so that we should be made fit to express God, both in the world to come and in the eternal day.
May the Lord help us to learn from Him, for the love of His Name.
VALENCE
1st November 1952
Translated from the French magazine, ‘Ondées’,
February 1953
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRESENT TIME
A.J.G. We all recognise—I have no doubt on that matter—that this chapter is quite unique. That comes from the Lord speaking directly to the Father. He does this with His own listening, and in principle, we listen to Him, so that we understand Christ’s desires of heart for us; it is for that that He speaks directly to the Father. When the Lord spoke to the disciples, He was in a certain measure limited; there were certain things that He wanted to say, but He could not express them on account of their limitations. But in addressing the Father, the Lord is not limited, He can therefore express Himself fully. It is a prayer that covers the whole period of the Christian testimony, a great part of it occupied with our position down here, although at the end, the Lord expresses the desire that His own should be with Him where He is. It is very striking that the Lord should begin by saying, “Father, the hour is come”. It is a bit similar to what we have in chapter 13, where it is said that Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of the world to the Father. That gives us to feel the importance of the present period in the mind of the Lord and in the mind of the Father, because the expression “hour” is used in John’s writings to express a period characterised by a single thing. I believe that is what is in mind in the term, an hour; it is the whole period of the presence of Christ above and the Spirit down here, so that what has been manifested in Christ down here is now continued in the saints. But in view of that being possible, the Lord speaks of giving life eternal to all those that Father has given Him. Life eternal makes us superior to all that is in the world in which we are found. In order that we should be in the testimony for the pleasure of God, we have to be superior to what is in the world and the power for that rests in the enjoyment of life eternal.
P.A.N. Would you give us an explanation of verse 2, “all that thou hast given him”; not only persons, the persons no doubt are included, but there is more than the persons.
A.J.G. I think that the Lord considered them as one complete idea, not only the persons in themselves, but the testimony borne by persons, and life eternal consists in the knowledge of the true God and the One whom He has sent. The thought of being sent seems to stand out in this prayer, as also in the whole gospel of John. The thought of being sent would deliver us from all that is lacking in itself, all that is lacking of a definite character, because the one who is sent has a mission, and the mission must be fulfilled. The Lord had said previously that His meat was to do the will of Him that had sent Him, and He begins His prayer saying, “I have completed the work”. The Lord had always kept that in His heart, to complete that for which He had been sent into the world. Paul uses the same language in the second epistle to Timothy; he says, “I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”, so that this idea of being sent is very important, not that we take it in an official way or with presumption. In John 20: 21, the Lord says to His disciples, “Peace be to you: as the Father sent me forth, I also send you”, it is as disciples not as apostles that they are sent, being placed in the favour of God, as He says, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God, and your God”. We must then go out into the sphere of testimony with the feeling of an obligation, to be down here identified with the father’s Name. It is thus that the Lord says, “I have glorified thee on the earth …”, He speaks of having manifested the Father’s Name to the men who had been given Him out of the world.
R.B. Do we see how the Lord Jesus was completely devoted to the Father’s Name in what is in the first three verses? He does not say “I”, He says “Son”.
A.J.G. I think so. It is quite clear that the Lord always had the Father’s Name and His glory at heart; He appreciated His own as given to Him by the Father. From that point of view, all that had been seen in a perfect way in His Manhood down here was to be continued in those whom the Father had given Him. We see what a triumph there is in that for God, because that has been effectuated in the world where Satan has domination. The first suggestion that was made to the woman challenged the Name of God; he suggested that God was not true and that His word could not be trusted; this challenge had first been seen by Christ, and then by those whom the Father had given Him, who had to be in the world in the presence of the power of Satan, manifesting the Father; hence the importance of knowing the Father and appreciating His Name. So the Lord says, “I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me”, and He prays that they should be kept in this Name.
E.J.S. Do we see the principle of two services of the Lord in this chapter, as Mediator and Priest, because at the beginning of the chapter, in the first part, it is those whom the Father has given Him, so that He gives them life eternal, and in verse 17, it is, “Sanctify them by the truth; thy word is truth”?
It is more as Priest so that there is a result for God’s pleasure.
A.J.G. I think that is so. The Lord is the Mediator as having expressed the great thoughts of God and He is now engaged as Priest on high, and this is expressed in the words, “I sanctify myself for them, that they also may be sanctified by truth”. In the epistle to the Hebrews, it is said that He is our Forerunner; we learn from Him what our place is and that has a sanctifying effect. The Lord has taken such a place definitely in the presence of the Father in view of that, so that the Spirit of God would occupy us with Christ as He is. That is why in the epistle of John, it is said, “even as he is, we also are in this world”. It is a very sanctifying thought.
R.B. Would you say something about the mutual glorifying of the Person, the Father and the Son, and later in the chapter, the saints who are glorified. The glory that the Father has given to the Son, He has given to His own.
A.J.G. It is very interesting. That accentuates this marvellous unity that exists between the Father and the Son; He asks to be glorified, but only so as to glorify the Father; then He gives His own the glory the Father has given Him; that is the glory of being here in the Father’s Name, in the joy of the Son, for us, the joy of adoption. The Lord was down here in service but in service as Son; He was not in this sense a bondman. From another point of view, it speaks of Him taking the form of a bondman, but in going through this world, bearing the Father’s Name, He was in the dignity of a Son and served with the affections of a Son. It is to that that the Lord makes allusion, I believe, when He says, “the glory thou hast given me, I have given them”. Just as the Lord had only one end before Him, we also must have this one end in being here, and that has an effect that unifies us.
R.B. To be here to glorify the Father, would you say?
A.J.G. Yes.
G.R.W. Would you explain the verse you have just mentioned, “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given me”?
A.J.G. That refers to the Name, not to the Persons, but to the Name: “keep them in thy name which thou hast given me”. It was Christ’s glory as Man down here to live in all that the Father was for Him; that is the idea implied in the Name. That must be something entirely real for us; we must be kept there. I believe that we have already said yesterday that if in a family everything is going on rightly, the father gives character to everything and the children learn to love what the father loves and to hate what is hateful to him. I believe that has its application to us. So in writing to young people, John speaks of the world which is not of the Father, as if that was the measure; if the Father loves something, we must love it, and if He rejects it, we must turn from it.
E.J.S. When it is a matter of the public side, everything must be referred to the Name of the Lord Jesus. Here it is a matter of what is more intimate, in the family, the Name of the Father.
A.J.G. I believe that is right. Publicly, we invoke the Name of the Lord Jesus, but in private we have the family relationship, we know the Father. On the other hand, the characteristic of the public testimony is that God should be known, not only in the thought of Father in relation to the family, but as God. So, in the epistle to the Corinthians where the public position is in view, it is said, “the assembly of God, which is in Corinth”, and if someone comes in there, he is to have the impression that God is truly there, so that the public testimony has glorifying God in view. Christ must also be the subject of testimony, but as being One in whom God has been manifested to men. Besides the thought of life eternal, there are two great thoughts that we find in this chapter, one is the Lord’s desire that we should be sanctified, and the other is that we should be one. These are the two great essential features in the testimony, that the saints should be apart from the whole course of things in this world and that they should be entirely one. We can see what testimony there is in that for God because God is holy and He is one, absolutely.
P.A.N. On the subject of sanctification, would you say something about the Lord’s word, “I sanctify myself for them”?
A.J.G. The Lord was going deliberately to take His place in the Father’s presence for us, so that we might learn our position in Him. He is literally out of this world and He is in the affections of the Father, morally suited to Him in every way, and we must learn from Him the measure and character of our sanctification. It is said in the epistle of John that, “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”, and immediately afterwards, it is said that, “every one that has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure”, that is to say in Christ, “purifies himself, even as he is pure”. What does that mean?
P.A.N. It is as Man that He speaks.
A.J.G. Surely. It evidently does not mean that the Lord needs sanctification in any sense. There is a need as far as we are concerned, but in Christ we learn all that suits God in a Man. Thus, in John 6, Peter says, “we have believed and known that thou art the holy one of God”. That is the impression he had gained in the presence of Jesus. He is truly morally suited for God as Man. Now the Lord is effectively going to set Himself apart from this world, so that the full thought of sanctification should be before our eyes in Him.
P.A.N. He remains our Model to the end.
A.J.G. Indeed so.
P.C. I thought of 1 John 2: 20: “And ye have the unction from the holy one”.
A.J.G. That has a great power in sanctification as to what concerns us. But what have you in mind?
P.C. The connection “from the holy one”. It is a matter of the Lord Himself; the Lord having sent the Spirit, the promise of the Father.
A.J.G. Yes. The unction is the Spirit, and in particular the spiritual discernment that provides. But “from the holy one” is an allusion, I suppose, to the Lord Himself, for it is the Lord as Man who received the Spirit from the Father and who gave Him for men.
E.J.S. It says in chapter 10: 36, “do ye say of him whom the Father has sanctified”, then He sanctifies Himself for us, so that we should receive the Holy Spirit and that the work might go on in us.
A.J.G. Quite so. As to the position of the testimony, the thought of sanctification is emphasised from the beginning. So it is that the Lord is presented as having been sanctified and sent into the world. The same thing is seen in principle in Paul. He tells us in chapter 26 of the Acts that the Lord appeared to him to take him out from the nations to whom He would send him. He must first be taken out of the nations, and then be sent to them. There therefore has to be sanctification first, to be able then to be sent to men.
S.C. Joseph had been put apart from his brethren. Is that the thought?
A.J.G. He had been sent too. I think of Joseph and David, two remarkable cases of persons sent by their father. Joseph had been sent to his brethren and rejected by them, and David had been sent by his father to the army and rejected by his older brother; but in the two cases there is the illustration of being sent on a definite mission which had to be fulfilled whatever the cost.
R.B. Do we have a similar thought with Jeremiah? Jehovah says, “I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I hallowed thee, I appointed thee a prophet unto the nations”.
A.J.G. That is very striking. He had been strengthened in a particular way to face the opposition. I think that the two ideas, sanctification and unity are of extreme importance as to the position in the testimony.
E.J.S. It is the same principle in Isaiah.
A.J.G. He was sanctified and then sent.
R.B. I thought particularly of the end of verse 11, of the thought of unity. It is wonderful: a unity that exists among us of the same character as what belongs to the Persons of the Godhead: “that they may be one as we”.
A.J.G. That shows the remarkable measure the Lord had before Him. There is not the least divergence between the minds of the Father and the Son.
One has often been impressed by what the Lord says in chapter 5: 19: “The Son can do nothing of himself save whatever he sees the Father doing: for whatever things he does, these things also the Son does in like manner”, so that the Father keeps nothing back from the Son but shows Him all that He is doing. That casts a wonderful light on the communion between the Father and the Son in which the Lord was here for the Father’s glory.
R.B. That requires that nothing is done in a spirit of independence.
A.J.G. I am sure of it. The Lord has in view that the saints should be truly in unity in the sphere of testimony according to the divine desire.
P.A.N. Would Psalm 133 not give us a good example of unity?
A.J.G. Yes, indeed. And that is followed by the thought of serving God in Psalm 134: those who serve stand by night in the house of Jehovah, as if the whole period of the Lord’s absence was full of service to God in unity.
S.C. Could it be said that the Lord had this thought in view in chapter 13: “Unless I wash thee, thou hast not part with me”?
A.J.G. If we all have part with Christ, we will be unified. Is that what you were thinking?
S.C. The Lord had that in view.
A.J.G. Yes, for each in particular and for us all.
E.J.S. At the beginning, the apostles had a special place, and afterwards we are added, and all are merged together.
A.J.G. That is so. The Spirit effected a wonderful unity as soon as He came. While the apostles had a distinctive place—it is said that believers persevered in the teaching and fellowship of the apostles—they themselves disappeared in the company, so that after they had been let go, they went to their own company and the saints lifted up their voice with one accord to God.
It is interesting to see that, while the apostles had their place of distinct authority in the power of the Spirit, they learned to merge with the saints, and the Spirit can use whom He pleases; one time He used Stephen and not one of the apostles, another time, He used Philip. It is remarkable to see in the Acts that, while the apostles have their place as apostles, the Spirit asserts His rights in using other persons if that pleased Him. But all that helps us to stress this thought of unity.
P.A.N. You have spoken of chapter 5 of John as relating to the unity between the Father and the Son, and in continuing reading there, we find, “that ye may wonder”. Do you think that this unity leads us to this wonder, which is necessary for substantial praise?
A.J.G. I think so. The gospel of John always has in view to contemplate and meditate; there is this idea particularly in the words of the Lord Jesus: “the words which I have spoken unto you are spirit and are life”.
P.A.N. I am thinking of the poverty of our praises, and the passage tells us, “He will show you greater works than these”. If we have the vision of these greater works, the praise will get greater; there will be freshness.
A.J.G. Chapter 17 ends with this desire of the Lord’s for His own, that they should be with Him where He is so as to see His glory, as if He would introduce this thought of contemplation, because He says, “thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world”. We must consider a Person in whom the thoughts of God before the world’s foundation could be seen now are realised. We learn in a conscious way that God has had such thoughts for men, and He has taken a way by means of the incarnation of a Person of the Godhead so that these thoughts should be realised. This Person has been loved eternally, but He is now in this position in Manhood so that men would be brought in with Christ Himself, which results in the praise of God. That brings in the thought of divine love and divine wisdom, of divine grace; the depth of love in redemption and divine power which established everything out of death, so that we contemplate what God has reached in Christ as Man; we must be brought in for God’s pleasure, so that the Lord sets out the idea of the love of Christ and the love with which the Father loves Him. He says, “I have made known to them thy name, and will make it known; that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them”.
The love with which the Father loves Christ must be in His own; they are made capable by the Spirit of the Father of loving Christ, in a certain sense, as the Father loves Him and we are thus led into communion with the Father, in His wonderful joy. Having the Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts, we are led in communion with the Son in His greatest joy; we answer to the Father in a certain sense as Christ does because we have the Spirit of God’s Son in our hearts. We think of the Holy Spirit as taking the character of the Spirit of God’s Son and working in our hearts in this character. Now we realise thus in what a wonderful way we are brought near to God to have part with the Father in His joy and to have part with the Son in His joy.
R.B. That produces unity in us.
P.A.N. Do you think that, when the Lord says, “this is the eternal life, that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”, His prayer is a development of that?
A.J.G. I think that. I can see that life eternal is a great unity so that we should be here in the testimony. Mr James Taylor has said4 that the knowledge of the only true God delivers us from every form of idolatry, and the knowledge of Jesus Christ “whom thou hast sent” delivers us from every form of lawlessness. I believe we can see the value of that.
VALENCE
2nd November 1952
Translated from the French magazine, ‘Ondées’, July 1953
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